Bioengineer: the heart is one of the easiest organs to bioprint, we'll do it in a decade (Wired UK).
- Category Archives 3d printing
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Christmas gift ideas from Spinneyhead
Not long to go until Christmas, so, if you’re unsure about what to get your friends and family, may I suggest a couple of online shops.
Buy my handmade, art and vintage stuff from Zibbet, or get 3D printed models from Shapeways. All cool stuff, some of it using the most modern of methods, some old school.
And don’t forget, if you have a Kindle you can buy my books from Amazon (and Garth Owen’s as well).
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3D printed N gauge bus shelters and OO gauge bikes now available through Shapeways
I’ve been working away on some 3D stuff, and you can now order N gauge (1:148 scale) bus shelters and OO gauge bikes and more from Shapeways.
There should be more new designs going up in the next few weeks.
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Greater Manchester Police seize 3D printer used to make guns in raids, as well as crack cocaine, £2m of counterfeit goods, lethal weapons and high-powered cars – Manchester Evening News
Component parts of what could be the UK’s first-ever 3D gun were seized in Greater Manchester’s biggest-ever crackdown on gangs.
Police and other agencies have been involved in around 100 raids during a week of hush-hush operations, with more expected this morning. Fifty people have been arrested so far.
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3-D scans turn fossils into print replicas
Nearly 20,000 fossils in Britain have been scanned and uploaded onto the Web, allowing the public to download them and print intricate replicas.
Thousands of prehistoric fossils have been rescued from dusty museum archives and made available online by the British Geological Survey as highly detailed 3-D models.
Researchers and the public can now access almost 20,000 virtual fossils and print 3-D replicas. There are also plans in the works to digitally scan dinosaur fossils.
The blog of the 3D fossil project is here.
via 3-D scans turn fossils into print replicas.
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Look at my Tiny Chopper!
Based upon a popular child’s bike, these little beauties will bring life and colour to any modern image layout set in the seventies and later.
The bikes frames are 3D printed and come unpainted with a section of bent wire for the handlebars- trim the bars to the appropriate length and attach them with super glue. (The handlebars supplied will be in silver, not, as seen in the photo, black.)
The OO Gauge Chopper 2 pack is available to order from Spinneyworld.
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Look at my little Chopper
I just built up one of the O gauge 3D printed chopper bikes that arrived last week. Not bad.
You can order yours from the Spinneyworld shop.
(There are also OO gauge bikes, which are even smaller and more fiddly. I’m in the process of building one of those as well.)
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Little pieces of plastic that make me very happy
These arrived today, and I am very pleased with them. They’re the latest test prints of my first set of modern image bikes for model railways. The larger bikes are O gauge (1:43rd), and look to be ready for market. You can order them from the Spinneyworld shop, with the first full scale print late this month or early next.
The smaller bikes are OO (1:76th). At that size, the handle bars and pedals were too fine to print (I had to fatten them up for the O gauge ones). The question is, would people buy them if they need to fashion their own handle bars? I could make them in etched brass, but that could be expensive, or make them from wire, a little labour intensive. But I’m selling to resourceful folk, maybe I can rely on them to do a bit of the work.
Modellers, what do you think?
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3D printing is the future!!!!
I’m sure downloadable and customisable were amongst the requirements for the Perfect Sex Toy project. Not so sure about the acetone vapour bath, though.
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Hi-fi, Lo-fi, high-tech, low-temp
3D printed records-
The Aphex Twin sounded about right. There’s information about the process here.
(via readwrite.com)
Records made of ice-
(via BoingBoing)
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Buy my benches
1:76th Park Bench
4 simple modern park benches. Each has a mounting peg in one leg to secure them to baseboard.
This is a test of embedding buy buttons for Shapeways printed items.
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Personal portable 3D printer
The UP printer is another 3D printer designed for home and hobby use. $1500 for the little machine and $50/kg for the material it uses may seem steep, but I reckon it’s comparable to early laser printers. One day I’ll have my own 3D printer.
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I wish I’d thought of that- the Road Popper
Available through Shapeways, the Road Popper is a stainless steel bottle opener which mounts on the rails of your saddle. Neat.
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Bits From Bytes
Bits From Bytes is a British company which makes desktop 3D printers with prices starting under £2000. That’s for the single head version of their printer. Realistically, and especially if you want to creat more complex structures, you really need the two head version, which will also lay down support material. I’m not sure what the three head printer will do. They also make a build it yourself version if you’re feeling adventurous.
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Print your own Iron Man suit
Part way through watching Iron Man 2 on Wednesday (great fun film, by the way) Alex demanded I make a power suit through 3d printing. It turns out, that’s how a lot of parts of the suits were made.
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We can all be industries now
Reading this article about the revolution in small scale manufacturing and industry in Wired reminded me that I haven’t uploaded anything new to my Shapeways shop for a few months.
It’s time to reinstate the rule that Mondays are for 3d modelling, whether for upload or background details in the comic. I have a commission, of sorts, to design door and window surrounds for the station on Dad’s model railway. Tomorrow I think I’ll pick up an Airfix Ford Escort
, because I have ideas of bits to do for it. Then I need to get the Italeri 1/24 Land Rover
and see what I can do for that.
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Full colour 3d printing
Want!
Courtesy of Shapeways, where I already have a shop. Time to break out those Blender books again.
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This month I’m going to be even geekier than normal
Tomorrow I shall be attending the Manchester Model Railway Society’s exhibition. Simultaneously, some of my comics shall be on sale from the Manchester Comix Collective’s table at the Birmingham International Comic Show. Meanwhile I’m creating new models for my Shapeways shop. I’ve set myself a deadline of Monday so I can order stuff to sell at Gamecon ’09 on the 17th.
And if that isn’t enough, I’m almost ready to start the first page on my space comic, which is now titled Point of Contact. I’ve had a few volunteers on Facebook who want their surname to be given to the family who are four of the six main (human) characters. I may just write all the names down on slips of paper and draw them out as I need surnames.
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Gimme Shelter. New 3d printable products
Mondays are my designated 3d designing days, though for the last couple of weeks I’ve been struggling up the steep initial learning curve of Blender. I’ve reached a level where I can create what I want using boolean operations such as union, though that doesn’t always produce printable objects. I have an extra day to dedicate to 3d this week, so I’ll see if I can move on to sculpting rather than gluing.
This Monday I made three bus shelters, which are available from my Shapeways shop–
The small shelter without an advertising box comes in a four pack. It needs painting and glazing- acetate should glue easily to the backs of the supports. I may design a map/timetable transfer to go on the incorporated board.
The small shelter with an advertising box comes in a two pack. I may design advert transfers for it, in the meantime you can always print out your own to fit. Again, it will need painting and glazing.
The large shelter is available singly or in a two pack. It’s cheaper per unit in the two pack, but you may need just the one for the stop right outside your station. Painting and glazing required, of course.
I’m going to take a break from model railway stuff for a week or so to build wargaming bits to be sold at the upcoming Gamecon in Manchester.
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OO modern street furniture through Shapeways
The plan is to produce a few simple models every week and build up a wide range of street furniture for model railway builders. I’ll be ordering copies of my own products, some of which will go to magazines for promotion and some I will build myself and record here. In fact the first batch should print and ship this week, so next week I’ll be painting bins.
Today and yesterday I designed and uploaded some benches-
The cantilever bench comes as a set of five, the other two as sets of four. The price will depend upon which material you use, but includes taxes and shipping charges. There’s a minimum order of $25. None of the models will exceed that individually, but the idea is for you to be able to pick and choose street furniture until you’ve got enough, with enough variety, for your layout.
The benches, and the bins I designed last week, are available from my Shapeways shop.